Op­tOpt 1.1

Launch apps via your key­board

Op­tOpt aims to re­place the OS X app switcher by adding the abil­ity to launch or switch pro­grams us­ing key­board short­cuts. It’s a wor­thy idea, but let down by poor ex­e­cu­tion.

Op­tOpt is fid­dly to set up – you have to man­u­ally en­able it in Ac­ces­si­bil­ity pref­er­ences, and then you must set up cus­tom key­board short­cuts for your favourite apps us­ing its menu bar icon. This is crit­i­cal as it al­lows you to launch apps that aren’t run­ning (and there­fore on dis­play in the Op­tOpt app switcher), but you do have to re­mem­ber your cus­tom key con­fig­u­ra­tions. Mat­ters are fur­ther com­pli­cated when you con­sider that apps are only avail­able to con­fig­ure when they’ve run along­side Op­tOpt, so it can recog­nise them.

Once you get past all these hur­dles, press å twice to re­veal Op­tOpt, then your short­cut to ac­cess an app. It works, but the ef­fort in­volved makes Op­tOpt im­pos­si­ble to rec­om­mend in its cur­rent state. Nick Peers

This key­board­driven app switcher is a nice idea, but its flaws out­weigh its mar­ginal ben­e­fits.